VIFF 2017: "Faces Places"

Faces Places

I've been a fan of veteran French filmmaker Agnès Varda's work for many years. A charter member of the influential nouvelle vague movement since the 1950s, she's worked with many other luminaries of French cinema: Jean-Luc Godard; Alain Resnais; Chris Marker. She was married to Jacques Demy (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort etc) until his death in 1990 at age 59 (her 1991 film Jacquot de Nantes was a retelling of Demy's boyhood). Perhaps Varda's most engaging films are the documentaries, in which her open affections, and her idiosyncratic personality, are on full display. I'm thinking of Daguerréotypes, her 1975 portrait of the people who live and work on the rue Daguerre in Paris, where Varda herself also lives; and The Gleaners and I (2000).

You'd think that Varda, now 89, might be at a stage in life where she's willing to rest on her considerable laurels. Instead, she sets out on an extensive road trip with photographer/muralist JR, 55 years her junior, the pair driving along the autoroutes and exploring the back roads of rural France in JR's customized van—essentially a photo-booth on wheels—which spits out poster-sized prints through a slot in the van's side. This marvellous travelling photo-booth can also convert an ordinary photograph into a multi-story mosaic version, and in Faces Places, Varda's latest film, we watch JR and Varda photograph ordinary citizens and transform them into larger-than-life versions of themselves, the results displayed on the walls of barns, factories, and houses.

Among the ordinary people they visit (and celebrate) are: ex-miners, waitresses, factory workers, and the spouses of dockworkers. They speak with a technology-loving farmer who manages thousands of hectares of land, all by himself; they visit a squatter, who invites them (and us) in for a closer look at the home he's made from cast-off furniture and found objects (an echo of The Gleaners and I). All are celebrated equally through Varda and JP's attention, and through the giant photo-mosaics they create.

Taken together these portraits offer us an idealized vision of contemporary France. Unaddressed by this wonderful film are the darker realities facing France today: unemployment; xenophobia; the rise of the far right. Instead, Varda and JR celebrate the kind of France which could be, where a sense of community is created and constantly renewed through empathy: people taking the time to get to know and make connections with their neighbors.

Faces Places was one of my favourite films at this year's VIFF, but be warned: if you watch it, you're highly likely to become a Varda fan yourself. If and when that happens, there's lots more of her films to track down and view; as with Face Places, they will reward the effort. You might also want to check out this piece from The Believer, in which Sheli Heti almost interviews Varda in Toronto in 2009.

Faces Places will return—briefly—during VIFF Repeats, on Sunday, October 15th at 2:30 pm